


Love Is A Heart Condition

by Malivrag



Category: Def Leppard, Guns N' Roses, Music RPF
Genre: Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 05:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10870398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malivrag/pseuds/Malivrag
Summary: Sav unsuccessfully copes with Steve's death.





	Love Is A Heart Condition

I.

Sav's lover stirs in the bed; he lifts his head and banishes the night with a shake of his golden hair. He looks around, obviously discomfited from waking to find himself alone.

Sav approaches him, sliding his fingers and then his palms across the sheets, gone cool in his absence. As he leans over him, Sav's lover opens his arms in a welcoming embrace. Sav falls into his arms. Lips touch his lips; lips touch the little crease above his top lip; lips touch the bridge of his nose.

II.

Phil is shaking with barely contained emotion. It's bubbling out of his throat, it's about to shoot from his fingertips. His eyes say, how dare you.

His eyes say, _he was never yours_.

His eyes say, _he was mine_.

Vivian just puts his head down and plays and plays. He snaps strings. He breaks a nail. He keeps playing.

Joe tells Sav, "You can't 'eal if you keep tearing the wound open."

Sav is pinned to the spot by the emotion in Phil's eyes. He has flown too near the sun, and his wax wings are melting. He's plummeting to Earth, to be dashed to pieces for daring to challenge the heavens.

III.

He was drunk when Sav met him. Very drunk. Tall, and so golden and so alive. That familiar face, loved for so long. The calloused hands.

(he'd known steve for fifteen years)

It was backstage at that awful award show. The one where the fight almost broke out -- two fights actually. His lover had a hand in the second almost-fight. He wasn't Sav's lover then. Yet.

He'd had a new instrument, and he'd been so proud to show it to Sav.

(six letters. guitar)

Four letters: Bass.

Four letters: Duff.

They had that much in common. Epic love stories have been built on less.

IV.

For fifteen years, Sav loved from afar. He loved every thing about Steve. He loved so long, so deeply, so completely, that it was an intrinsic part of him; if Sav did not love Steve, then he could not be wholly Sav.

A thousand, thousand, thousand people fell in love with Steve Clark every night. They watched from the audience and they yearned for this blond Viking god with the beautiful smile. And Sav stood back and thought, yes, let them feel it, too. As though to see them united in such feeling could only feed and grow his own love.

_I stand this close to white lightning. And maybe I'm not brave enough to reach out and be burnt. But I'm this close, and all of you are out there, and that much further from him than I am._

V.

Sav's recording in Dublin when his lover comes to him in the night and asks to be let in. He stands before Sav's door and looks in hopefully and says, "I spend my days and nights thinking about you."

Sav cracks open the door and lets him in.

"How did you find me?"

"I flew here," his lover says.

"And your band?"

"Dead in the water," his lover sighs.

The voice is all wrong. The accent -- the intonation -- it's all wrong. It ought to be as familiar as home, as the streets of Sheffield. He should know that voice like he knows his own. It's wrong.

It's wrong.

Sav lets his lover's hands play along his spine. They both know their instruments well.

His lover crossed the ocean for him.

VI.

Sometimes the bitterest thing is to look at the old pictures, the old videos, and realize that _this is all there will ever be_. There are no new memories to be made. The photographs will go yellow and crumble. The video will warp from being played and rewound and played again. Sav will grow older, and there will never be anything new between them.

When Phil sees Sav with his lover, he flings a very expensive guitar against the wall and storms out of the studio. Joe runs after him. Vivian puts his head down.

Sav's lover says, "Fuck, what did I do wrong?"

Sav looks at the sad remains of the guitar, it's broken body that will never sing again.

VII.

For fifteen years, Sav loved Steve Clark from afar. Since they were barely more than boys, before he really knew what love was or what love does. He was a slave before he knew what freedom was.

In fifteen years, Steve never opened his arms to him. He died in the night, in the time between Sav falling asleep and waking, and he died without Sav ever once holding him close, or kissing his mouth, or having any piece of him.

Steve comes to Phil in his dreams, and they talk, just like when he was alive. He has never once come to Sav in his dreams. In all the time since that Sav has spent between falling asleep and waking, not once has Steve come to him, spoken to him. For fifteen years, Sav lived on ashes for nourishment, flourished on nothing, clung to a vision. Even Steve's ghost will not haunt him.

VIII.

"I love you," Sav tells his lover.

If his lover speaks, the illusion will fall and shatter; so Sav kisses him to stop his mouth. He tastes him and tells himself that this is how he tastes. The evening is kind to his illusions. The evening masks the lines of his lover's face, turns him into the one Sav loves; obscures the marks on his skin, makes them easy to ignore; and Sav does the rest himself.

"I love you, too," whispers his lover.

"I spend my nights and days thinking about you," whispers his lover.

Tears squeeze out of the corners of Sav's eyes as the illusion cracks dangerously; the edges are sharp, and like to kill. There's alcohol on his lover's breath, and it's kind to him. The illusion sustains a little while longer. He buries his hands in golden blond hair and draws his lover's mouth to his own. His lover embraces him like he can't believe Sav is his, like he can't believe his luck that Sav loves him.

After, as his lover slumbers beside him, Sav steals a cigarette out of his bag. He sits up cross-legged in bed and strikes a match. The darkness is illuminated, and for but a single instant, he's there. Sav sucks in a shocked breath, willing the moment to last forever. Sitting before him, in that half-second the flame lasts, is Steve.

The flame is snuffed out, and Steve is gone. Sav crawls forward, reaching out to him. He's gone. He lies deep underground, the warmth blasted from his bones by the frigid wind and ice. Sav's hands ball into fists, and he strikes the bed once, twice.

Something cracks -- the mirror hanging on the door to Sav's bedroom. A jagged crack mars its surface.

Duff stirs in the bed, shaking his shaggy blond head. He looks about for Sav, finds him standing before a cracked mirror. Did it always have a crack in it?

Sav feels his way to him, and Duff, who crossed an ocean for him and fell in love with him in fifteen days, welcomes him back.


End file.
